


A Castle on the Moon

by GloriaMundi



Category: We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson
Genre: Animal Death, Gen, Gift Fic, Misses Clause Challenge, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 06:54:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8880208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaMundi/pseuds/GloriaMundi
Summary: "He will be running and leaping in the fields of the moon," I said. "He will look down on us, and see what good care we are taking of this husk he left behind.""He will chase unicorns," said Merricat, "and play with sphinxes."





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MixolydianGrey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MixolydianGrey/gifts).



The morning sun streamed bright through the kitchen door, and onto the floor, which I had washed. Merricat lay motionless, miserable, on her bed in the corner, staring up at the pattern of damp on the ceiling. She had wept all night, until she had no more tears left. My heart would break, if she had not already broken it a dozen times over.

Sometimes I think our names define us: our parents named me Constance (a name to bless a bride, though I shall never be that) and I have been constant and true to my sister. But today poor Merricat was far from merry.

Yesterday evening, at moonrise, we buried Jonas in his favourite place, underneath the rosemary bush beneath the boarded-up kitchen window. He loved to sit there and sun himself, soak the sunlight into his ageing bones. There was white around his whiskers, and he moved more carefully. And yesterday afternoon he curled up and went to sleep there, and died.

It was Merricat who found him. I heard a dreadful howl, and at first I did not know what I'd heard. My heart faltered, and I put my hand to my breast. Then I realised that it was Merricat, outside the house, and I hurried to the kitchen door, looking carefully before I went beyond the threshold in case that howl had been provoked by some intruder. But surely I would have heard, if someone had clambered over the barricade she'd constructed?

She had not ventured far. She was sprawled on the path by the rosemary bush, Jonas in her arms. He could not have been dead for very long, because his body was still loose.

"Oh, Merricat," I said, and knelt beside her. "Oh, poor Jonas." I reached my hand out, but could not bear to touch that cold fur, that body where no heart beat any longer.

Around us the garden was settling into autumn. In the wood, the birds sang uncaringly. Jonas had not been interested in hunting them lately (though I remembered the years when there would be feathers on the doorstep every morning) but sometimes he would bring us a rabbit. Merricat had always praised him when he did so, and called him her beloved, her champion.

"We must bury him," I said.

"I'm not allowed to bury things," said Merricat, choking on the words.

"Then I shall bury him, and you shall do the ceremony."

I fetched the spade from the cellar -- we had moved the garden tools indoors, for fear of thieves -- and dug the grave. Merricat, in silence, went into the house and brought out one of her tablecloth-tunics, the green one with the flowers: she wrapped his little body in that. "He would hate to have his fur all dirty in the ground," she said.

"He will be running and leaping in the fields of the moon," I said. "He will look down on us, and see what good care we are taking of this husk he left behind."

"He will chase unicorns," said Merricat, "and play with sphinxes."

"He will come home to us," I said. I do not pray, but I put all my hope and certainty and love into those words. 

After the funeral, Merricat came indoors and went to her bed. I do not think she has slept. I brought her tea this morning, unsweetened. ( _Merricat, said Constance, would you like a cup of_ but I do not think about that song, and the children no longer sing it very often.) I knelt on the floor beside her, murmuring her name: but she turned her face from me. She clutched something to her chest, something ivory-coloured and polished, but I did not want to see what it was because I knew what she had found for comfort. Another Jonas. Maybe the very first Jonas, who sang for us on the night of the fire. Who could tell, now?

I moved around the kitchen, cleaning and washing and neatening our little world, and Merricat lay there wheezing. I worry that one of us will become ill. I worry about what will become of my sister, if I die before her. Or perhaps we will die together. That would be easier, and neither of us would have to be alone: and after all, Merricat learned her ways from me.

But thinking about the future never made the present any better: so I went down to the cellar, and took stock of our supplies, and decided that we would go out and pick berries quite soon. Merricat told me once that berries picked by moonlight are richer than the ordinary sort, and confer all kinds of powers on those who feast upon them. I do not know if that is true.

We would not go out tonight. We would dine on the last of the chicken stew that somebody had left for us, and some fruit preserve with biscuits. There were still many jars on the shelves with my own handwriting on the labels, though the Blackwood women's legacies, pickled beef and salted beans and illegible jams and jellies, would be sure to poison us. I picked up a jar of spiced apple chutney, and thought of Jonas playing under the apple trees, the year my courses stopped. The bright memory felt as though it came from some other woman's life.

The day passed very slowly. We do not have a clock, but it seemed to me that the hours stretched out. I fetched a pillow from Uncle Julian's room and settled on the floor by Merricat, watching her. She had fallen asleep at last, and I was glad of it. Sleep is the best salve for a wounded heart, or so I have read. (My own heart is inviolate. I shall never love, save for Merricat. Never bear a child. I have my sister to care for, after all.)

At last the light dimmed, and I could close out the autumn evening, close and lock the kitchen door and shut the world away. I lit the lamp and sat a while longer next to Merricat, half-dreaming, half watching her dream. It was rare to see her still: my dancing Merricat, always in motion. It seemed an age since I had truly seen her. How often do we look at those we live with? I know her face as well as my own: better, for we have no mirror, so she is my mirror and I hers. But I sat there looking at her, and I saw the lines at the corners of her eyes, the thick grey strands springing in her tangled hair, the salt on her skin from her weeping.

Perhaps there were sounds outside, the crunch of gravel underfoot or a soft voice speaking our names: I was careful not to listen. Some evenings, Merricat and I would sit by the front door and watch for the villagers with their offerings. There had been bread and cheese in a basket, the day before yesterday: last week, a delicious batch of brownies, still warm, wrapped in a clean napkin. Did they even remember why they bring us gifts? Did they remember what they -- or no, their mothers and fathers, by now -- did to wrong us, that night of the fire? Perhaps they think us witches, or ghosts, or goddesses. Perhaps they are right: would we know, if we were ghosts? I recalled Uncle Julian saying, "Mary Katherine died in the orphanage, of neglect," and shivered.

I stood up, careful not to disturb Merricat, and stretched a little to ease the cramp in my legs. I would go to the front door, and listen carefully in case anybody was outside, and if it was safe I would open the door and see whether the villagers had brought us a gift this evening.

The hall was dark, but I went softly and surely, barefoot. I could feel the broken beam at the bottom of the staircase draw back, knowing that I belonged and that it must not snag my tattered skirt nor scratch my leg. When I reached the front door I paused, peering out through the little gap in the cardboard that Merricat had nailed up to keep us hidden. There was no sign of any human presence. The driveway was empty, and there were no dark shapes against the night.

I opened the door with utmost care, and looked down.

There was Jonas in a basket.

He -- all ginger cats are male, I think, and every Jonas except one has been ginger -- he was curled up on a soft blue blanket that might have come from a baby's cot, but he woke at the sound of the door opening, or because he sensed my presence, and mewed up at me, blinking. Weaned, but not so very long ago.

"Hello, Jonas," I said gently to him, scooping up the basket. There was no food, but we had enough to be going on with, and when Merricat was feeling better perhaps she would forage in the kitchen garden. But Jonas! Jonas had come home to us.

I carried the basket, with its wriggling passenger, back through the dark hallway -- making sure to lock the door behind me -- and into the kitchen.

"Merricat," I said softly. "Merricat, look!"

She stirred on her pallet. "Constance?"

"Look, Merricat," I said, starting to kneel. My knees protested, and I lowered myself carefully to sit on the floor beside her, bringing the basket down so that she could see what lay within. "Jonas has come home again."

"Jonas is on the moon," said Merricat dreamily, but her hand crept out to pet the kitten, and he produced a sudden uproarious purr that made us both laugh. He flinched at our laughter, poor cat: but he quieted quickly enough under Merricat's sure touch. I wondered if it was a familiar feeling: if he knew Merricat's touch. He would be her cat, of course. Jonas is always her cat.

"Jonas is on the moon," I agreed. "And he has come home to us after his hunting. The unicorns made him young, you know, so that he could come back and be happy with us."

"We are very happy," Merricat told the kitten, "in our castle on the moon. Aren't we, Constance? Aren't we?"

**Author's Note:**

> Dear MixolydianGrey, I hope you enjoy the story! (Apologies for the melancholy key.) I reread the novel and found myself thinking about Constance a great deal.  
> Did you know they are making a film of _We Have Always Lived in the Castle_?
> 
> Thanks to N for beta!


End file.
